


The Trans-Boy who Lived (An Anti-Terf Rewrite of Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone)

by BBCotaku



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Fix-It, POC!Harry, POC!Hermione, Rewrite, Trans Character, Trans rights, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-21
Updated: 2020-03-31
Packaged: 2021-02-26 20:35:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21884866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BBCotaku/pseuds/BBCotaku
Summary: Harry Potter thinks he is an ordinary boy--until he is rescued by a beetle-eyed giant of a man, enrols in Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, learns to play Quidditch and does battle in a deadly duel.The Reason: HARRY POTTER IS A WIZARD (Who is also trans)
Comments: 22
Kudos: 77





	1. The Vanishing Glass

**Author's Note:**

> So. I'm a little bitter as you could probably tell.  
> This fic's main focus is fixing any racism, antisemitism, transphobia and transmisogyny within the first Harry Potter novel.  
> It's also supposed to piss off TERFS.  
> I won't be changing the general plot, however, most changes will be in regards to the characters and the world.  
> If you have any suggestions, feel free to mention in the comments!
> 
> Thanks to Levi for helping me edit. 
> 
> TW: Transphobia and references to abuse.

“Up! Get up! Now!”

Aunt Petunia’s knocks on Harry’s door battered his ears with a tooth-rattlingly sharp tatatatat. Dust trickled from the ceiling, leaving a pale film over everything. Harry rolled over onto his stomach and pulled the covers over his head. 

“Up!” Aunt Petunia gave the door one last rap before heading back down the hall to the kitchen

Harry buried his face against his pillow and tried to remember the dream he’d been having. It had had a flying motorbike in it and he’d been able to peek over the side and watch the twinkling lights of London swirl below him like a sea of stars. What really stuck with him, however, was how familiar the whole thing had felt. Maybe he’d had it before? He‘d never been good at remembering these sorts of things. Harry screwed his eyes shut and tried to grasp the faded whisps of the dream.

“Are you up yet?!” Petunia and her infernal knocking yanked him back to reality.

Harry clenched his jaw. “Nearly.”

“Well, get a move on. You need to look after the bacon--and don’t you dare let it burn. I want everything to be perfect on Duddy’s birthday.”

Harry groaned.

“What was that?!”.

Harry’s heart skipped a beat. “Nothing, nothing,” he said quickly.

Dudley’s birthday. How could he have forgotten?

Slowly, Harry got out of bed and started looking for socks. He found an odd pair tucked between his bed and the wall. A house spider had made its home in one of them, so Harry scooped it up and let it crawl from his palm up onto one of the low rafters. He was used to spiders, in fact, he’d become very fond of them in the years he’d been sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs. He’d even named a few of them.

He winced as he looked through the small pile of clothes the Dursleys had supplied him. All of them were dresses. He picked one that looked the least like a potato sack—a drab, navy blue high waist dress that was at least three sizes too big— and smoothed it out on his bed. The thought of putting it on, of catching himself in the mirror, of having other people seeing him wearing, was enough to make him feel physically ill.

The dresses had been one of the only presents his aunt and uncle had ever given him. Harry had found them dumped on his bed a few days after he’d mentioned to the Dursleys that he wanted to be a boy. What had he been thinking?

With grit teeth, Harry pulled the dress over his head. He just had to survive the day.

The kitchen table completely covered in presents. More than enough to fill Harry’s room from floor to ceiling. It looked like he’d gotten the computer he’d wanted, and the second television, and the racing bike.

No matter how hard he tried, Harry couldn’t fathom why on earth his cousin had asked for a racing bike of all things. Dudley Dursley hated exercise (unless, of course, you counted punching Harry as ‘exercise’, in which case it was his favourite thing ever). Though he very rarely managed to do that these days. Running was about the only thing Harry was any good at. Maybe that was what he wanted the bike for. So he and his gang could catch up to Harry when he got away.

Harry had always been small and quick, skinny too. It probably came with spending so much of his time crammed in the cupboard. The fact that many of the dresses he wore were made for women three times his size didn’t help either. In fact, it only emphasised his thin face and knobbly knees. The only part of his body that Harry actually liked was the thin scar on his forehead the shape of a bolt of lightning. He’d had it for as long as he could remember, though he didn’t have a clue how he’d actually gotten it. He’d made the mistake of asking Aunt Petunia once.

“In the car crash where your parents died,” she’d told him, her nose wrinkled in disgust. “Don’t ask questions.” Those words had quickly become Harry’s mantra. Don’t ask questions and you don’t have to deal with the consequences of the answers.

Uncle Vernon came into the kitchen just as Harry started to plate up the bacon, making sure to put the extra crispy rashers on Dudley’s plate. “Brush your hair,” he growled, plonking himself down into the chair beside his wife. The two of them couldn’t have looked any less alike. While Vernon was thick of bone, belly and hair, Petunia was just the opposite: thin and sallow with pinched and sour lips. One would assume that their son, Dudley, would be a mix of both his parents in appearance. However, it seemed that Vernon’s habit of dominating anything and everything also applied to his genetics. As a result, Dudley was a near-identical replica of his father: Thick in every sense of the word

Harry had moved onto scrambling eggs when the birthday boy finally made his grand entrance. Harry felt his whole body tense and he suddenly became very aware of the itchy ring of sellotape holding his glasses together. He moved quickly and plated up the three servings. As he set them down on the table, Harry watched as Dudley counted each of his presents on his fingers. 

He braced himself for an explosion.

“Thirty-six,” Dudley said with the expression of someone who had been force-fed a lemon. “That’s two less than last year!”

Aunt Petunia seemed to sense danger as well. “We’ll buy you too more presents while we’re out today. How does that sound, Popkin? Two more presents. Is that alright?” It was like watching someone defuse a bomb.

Dudley scrunched up his ruby face in thought. “That’ll be thirty...thirty…”

“Thirty-nine, sweetums.”

“Oh.” Dudley plonked himself down and made a grab for the first present.

Uncle Vernon chuckled. “Little Tyke wants his money’s worth,” he said, ruffling his son’s blonde curls.

And so began the yearly tradition of watching Dudley unwrap his presents, all of them containing things that Harry could only dream of owning. He had just reached his fifteenth present--a remote-control aeroplane--when the phone rang.

Aunt Petunia waved her hand as if to say ‘don’t mind me’ and she got up to answer it. Dudley didn’t stop and managed to get through two more presents (a video recorder and a copy of Super Mario World) before she returned with a dark cloud over her head.

“Bad news, Vernon,” she said. “Mrs Figg’s broken her leg. She can’t take her.”

Harry’s heart dropped to his stomach.

Every year the Dursleys took Dudley and a friend out for the day, to adventure parks, burger joints, or the cinema. As a result, every year Harry found himself under the care of Mrs Figg, the old woman who lived two streets away. Harry loved it there.

Mrs Figg, like Harry, was half Palestinian. She'd taken it upon herself to teach him absolutely everything she knew about their culture, from history to customs to Harry’s personal favourite: food. She bred cats for a living, which worked perfectly fine for Harry. He liked cats as much as he liked spiders.

Harry loved Mrs Figg. She was family, more so than the Dudley’s had ever been. She was the first person he’d told about wanting to be a boy, and the person who gave him the name Harry.

She was his escape.

“I could look after her,” Harry offered quickly.

His Aunt and Uncle acted as though he hadn’t spoken at all.

“We could phone Marge,” Uncle Vernon suggested.

“Don’t be silly, Vernon, she hates the girl.”

“What about that friend of yours...what’s-her-name?...Yvonne?”

Aunt Petunia shook her head. “On holiday in Majorca.”

Harry tried again. He couldn’t miss this. He couldn’t wait another year. “I could look after her.”

This time they paid attention.

Uncle Vernon scoffed. “And let you run amuck in that poor woman’s house?”

“I won’t run amuck!” He cried, but they weren’t listening anymore.

“I suppose we could take her with us to the zoo,” Aunt Petunia said slowly, “...and leave her in the car.”

Uncle Vernon’s face went as red as his son’s. “That car’s new, I’m not leaving her in it alone.”

Dudley had started to cry by this point. Well, ‘cry’ in the broadest sense of the word. There were no actual tears. Just a long, wailing screech punctuated by Dudley slamming his fists against the kitchen table so hard the plates rattled.

“Oh, Duddydums!” Aunt Petunia threw her arms around him. “Don’t cry. Mummy’s not going to let her ruin your special day.”

“I...don’t...want...her...to...come.” Dudley yelled, slamming his fists with each word. “She always spoils everything!”

Just then, the doorbell rang and, like someone had flicked a switch, Dudley’s crying stopped.

“Oh, they’re here already,” muttered Aunt Petunia under her breath. She and her husband exchanged grim looks.

All Harry could do was hold his breath.

Half an hour later, Harry found himself squished between Dudley and his rat-faced friend Piers Polkiss. Piers was Dudley’s longest-lasting friend and was often the one who held Harry’s hands behind his back while Dudley hit him. Harry stared straight ahead and tried his best to ignore the two boys elbowing him in the ribs.

His aunt and uncle hadn’t let him look after Mrs Figg. Instead, they’d just opted to take him with them to the Zoo. Harry had never been to the Zoo before. He knew he should be excited, but he simply couldn’t work up the effort.

Before he’d been piled into the car, Uncle Vernon had pulled Harry to one side and put his fat, red face right up close to his. “I’m warning you now, girly--any funny business, anything at all-- and you’ll be in the cupboard from now until Christmas.”

“I’m not going to do anything,” Harry had promised, “honest.” But he could tell Uncle Vernon didn’t believe him. No one ever did. To be fair to his uncle, Harry did have a habit of attracting danger.

Back when he’d told the Dersleys about wanting to be a boy, Aunt Petunia had announced that he was no longer allowed to keep his hair short. Up until then, Harry had managed to convince his aunt and uncle to let him keep his hair in a lieutenant-yar-esque bob. Harry had watched with dread as his hair grew longer and longer until, after a sleepless night of worry, he’d gotten up to find his pillow littered with tufts of thick, black hair. It hadn’t fallen out; there were no bald patches for him to find. No, his hair had simply broken off. From then on, his hair refused to grow past his ears without breaking. Aunt Petunia’s hairdresser had told them Harry had managed to damage his hair somehow, which meant, naturally, that Harry had to spend three miserable days locked in his cupboard.

Another time he’d gotten in trouble for climbing onto the roof of the school. He’d tried to explain to the headmistress how he’d been trying to jump behind the bins to hide from Dudley’s gang and that he really didn’t know how he’d managed to fling himself up to the school’s chimney, but his explanation simply didn’t cut it. That misadventure had earned him a whole week in the cupboard.

Uncle Vernon liked to complain when he drove. He liked to complain, period, usually about Harry--though he would never bring himself to actually call him that. 

The topic of Uncle Vernon’s complaining that day was motorbikes.

“...roaring along like maniacs, the young hoodlums!” he growled as a motorbike overtook them.

“I had a dream about a motorbike,” Harry remembered suddenly. “It could fly.” He froze. He hadn’t meant to speak aloud.

Uncle Vernon slammed on the breaks. He turned around in his seat to face Harry, his cheeks as red and blotchy as a beetroot. “MOTORBIKES DO NOT FLY!” he boomed.

Harry sank down in his seat. “I never said they did,” he murmured. “It was a dream.” If there was anything that the Dursleys hated more than questions, it was having things act in a way they shouldn’t. To the Dursleys what went up must come down with absolutely no exceptions. Even cartoons were enough to make Vernon burst into a fit of rage.

It was a very sunny day and the zoo was full to bursting with families enjoying the summer holidays. The Dursleys bought Dudley and Piers chocolate ice creams from a van in the carpark, and then, because the woman inside had asked Harry what he wanted before they could hurry him away, they bought him a cheap lemon pop. It wasn’t too bad either.

Harry had been expecting the trip to be hell on earth, however, it turned out to be pretty okay. He could walk a couple of steps behind the Dursleys and no one would even know they were related, and Dudley and Piers were far too busy annoying animals to bother picking on him. They ate lunch at the Zoo’s restaurant and when Dudley refused to eat because his Knickerbocker Glory didn’t have enough ice cream on top, Uncle Vernon bought him another one and Harry got to finish the first.

Harry knew he should have been happy. He should have been relaxed, but he simply couldn’t shake the feeling that it was all too good to be true.

After lunch Dudley and Piers dragged Harry and his Aunt and Uncle into the reptile house, claiming--rather loudly--that they wanted to see the biggest, most poisonous snake they could find. The two boys darted from tank to tank and quickly found what they were looking for: a fifteen-foot-long monster of a snake.

Dudley pressed his face against the tank, his breath fogging up the glass. “Make it move!” he snapped at his father. Uncle Vernon tapped the glass, but the snake didn’t budge. “Do it again!”

This time, Aunt Petunia rapped her fist against the glass with her patented machine-gun tatatat.

Again, nothing. The snake just snoozed.

“This is boring!” Dudley moaned and shuffled away to look at the other tanks.

Harry took the opportunity to move up to the glass and catch a look at the snake. 

“She’s awful, isn’t she?” he whispered. “She does that to me too.” He put a hand against the glass. 

He was miserable enough being locked in his cupboard every now and then, but the boa constrictor was locked in this tank for months upon months. Maybe even years.

Suddenly, the snake started to move. It raised its head, drawing it close to Harry’s.

It winked.

Harry’s mouth dropped open. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one else was watching. They weren’t, so he decided to wink back.

The snake moved its head towards The Dursleys with a look that seemed to say “I get that all the time.”

“It must be really annoying,” Harry murmured through the glass.

The snake nodded. It reminded Harry of Mrs Figg’s cats.

“Where do you come from anyway?” he asked.

The snake jabbed its tail at a little sign mounted beside its tank.

Brazilian Boa Constrictor.

“Was it nice there?”

The snake jabbed its tail again and Harry read on:

This specimen was bred in captivity.

It had spent its whole life in that little tank. Harry’s shoulders slumped. “I’m so sorry--”

“DUDLEY! LOOK AT THE SNAKE! YOU WON’T BELIEVE WHAT IT’S DOING!”

Before Harry even knew what was going on, Dudley had shoved him out of the way. He fell hard on the concrete floor, grazing his knees something rotten. Again, things moved too fast for him to understand.

One moment Piers and Dudley were right up against the glass, their eyes wide with awe and the next they were screaming with terror.

The glass in front of the Boa Constrictor’s tank had vanished.

The snake uncoiled itself quick as a flash, slithering out of the tank and onto the floor. The screams of the other visitors was deafening.

The snake slithered up to Harry and stopped just by his feet. It lowered its head, as if to bow before moving swiftly on. Harry just sat there in shock, because he could have sworn he’d heard the snake say “thank you.”

The ride back to the Dursley’s home at number four privet drive was quiet. Even Dudley remained silent; he just stared out his window for the whole ride home. It wasn’t until they were almost home that Piers finally broke the silence.

“Henrietta was talking to it,” he said. “Weren’t you?”

Harry said nothing. He didn’t like answering to that name.

Uncle Vernon waited until Piers had been picked up before starting on Harry. His face wasn’t just red: it was bright purple. He was shaking from head to toe, a vein standing out on his temple. “Cupboard. Go. No meals!” he snapped, too angry to say anything else.

Not that it mattered, Harry didn’t need to be told twice. He pulled off his stupid dress and tossed it to the floor before climbing into bed. He pulled the covers over his head. At least in the cupboard, he was safe from Dudley’s wrath.

He wondered if he could sneak out and find his way to Mrs Figg’s house. He’d have to wait until his Aunt and Uncle had gone to bed, but he could figure out the way, couldn’t he? She’d help him. She always helped him.

He told himself this sometimes. Sometimes he’d picture it out in his head: him turning up on Mrs Figg’s doorstep. She’d throw her arms around him and give him something hot to drink and tell him everything was going to be alright.

Whenever he spent the day with her, Mrs Figg would always tell him how brave he was. “Just like his father.”

But his father was dead.

And he wouldn’t sneak out.

He wasn’t brave enough.


	2. Letters from No One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I haven't updated in a few...months. I got shot with a case of writer's block.   
> Stay safe, ya'll! And wash your damn hands.

The incident with the snake earned Harry his longest ever punishment. By the time he was allowed out of the cupboard under the stairs, Dudley had already managed to break his new camera, crash his remote-control aeroplane and knock over poor Mrs Figg with his bike as she crossed the street on her crutches. 

Now that the summer holidays were well underway, there was no escape from Dudley’s gang, who came over almost every day. Piers, Dennis, Malcom and Gordon, all of who were just as big and brutish as Dudley. This meant that they were all more than willing to join in on Dudley’s favourite game: “Henrietta Hunting.” 

Harry spent as much time outside of number four Privet drive as possible, wandering from street to street and praying for the start of the new school year. When September came, it would bring with it Harry’s first year of secondary school where, for the first time in Harry’s short life, he would be free of Dudley. 

Dudley was going to the secondary school Vernon had attended when he was a child, “Smeltings”, as were most of his gang. Harry, on the other hand, was going to Stonewall High, which Dudley thought was just  _ hilarious. _

“They shove all the year seven’s heads down the toilet on the first day,” he told Harry with the same glee as a kid in a sweet shop. “You’ll finally get to go in the boys’ toilet!” 

Harry had hunched over when he’d heard that, like he was trying to scrunch himself up into a little ball. 

Dudley punched his shoulder before grabbing Harry’s dress by the scruff of the neck. “We should go upstairs and practise,” he said as he gave the fabric a sharp tug. 

Harry’s stomach twisted. “No,” he said, quickly pulling himself from Dudley’s grasp. “The toilet's never had anything as bad as your head down it--it might be sick.” And then he ran before Dudley had the chance to figure out what he’d said. 

One day in July, Aunt Petunia took Dudley to London to buy his Smeltings uniform, leaving Harry with Mrs Figg. 

Mrs Figg greeted him with a big hug the moment he walked through the door. “My poor boy!” she cupped his face in her hands. “Let me make you tea. You have to tell me everything about what happened.” 

The escape of the boa constrictor had made the news and while they hadn’t mentioned Harry by name, Dudley had no issue telling anyone who would listen how his evil cousin had sicked a deadly snake on him. 

“I didn’t do anything,” Harry said. 

“That’s what I thought,” Mrs Figg said with a shake of her head. “What’s that boy thinking, telling people that rubbish?” 

Harry said nothing, just sipped at his tea. He considered telling Mrs Figg about how the glass had vanished, how he heard the snake speak to him, but decided against it. Mrs Figg was the only person he had in the whole world who actually liked him for who he was. He wasn’t about to risk that over something that was probably just all in his head. The news articles had said that the snake had broken the glass itself, which, realistically, was probably what happened. 

It turned out that Mrs Figg had broken her leg falling over one of her cats and Harry couldn’t help but notice that she acted far more cautiously around them now. 

“They can be little monsters when they want to be,” she told Harry as they settled down to watch her usual quiz show together. “It’s in their nature.” 

Harry slanted his head to one side. “They’re just cats,” he said as the youngest of the cats--a calico cross who Mrs Figg had let him name Mr Paws--hopped up onto his lap for a scratch. “If they were dangerous, people wouldn’t keep them as pets.” 

Mrs Figg hummed and for a moment Harry thought she was going to say something. She didn’t, however. She just kept watching her show. All in all, the day ended up being an oasis of normalcy for Harry.

Normalcy which ended the moment he returned to Privet Drive to find Dudley parading about in front of his parents, decked out in full Smeltings apparel. This included: a maroon tailcoat, orange knickerbockers, a flat straw hat and--much to Harry's dismay--a long, knobbly stick. 

Harry knew he should be laughing, laughing at how ridiculous Dudley looked, at how his Aunt and Uncle were getting so choked up over what had to be the most hideous outfit in the history of mankind. But he couldn’t laugh. Instead, Harry just kept his eyes locked on that horribly long stick. 

Dudley held on to it all through dinner and still had it gripped between his pudgy fingers when Harry came into the kitchen for breakfast. Harry couldn’t be completely certain that his cousin hadn’t cuddled up with it like a teddy bear when he slept. 

Aunt petunia stood over the kitchen sink, prodding at some foul-smelling soup with a pair of tongs. 

Harry wrinkled his nose. “What is that?” he asked, wincing a little. He’d broken his one rule.

Aunt Petunia didn’t even look at him. “Your school uniform,” she snapped. She thrust the tongs into the murky liquid and pulled out a grey and lumpy...something. 

Harry furrowed his brow. “I didn’t think it would be so...wet…” 

“Don’t be stupid! I’m dying one of your old dresses grey. It’ll look just like all the other girls’ once I’m done.” She dunked the rags back into the water, splashing Harry’s arm. 

He took a seat at the breakfast table--taking care to sit as far away from Dudley as he could manage--and tried not to think of his first day at Stonewall wearing that... _ thing. _ Aunt Petunia might as well have just stamped “bully me!” on his forehead. 

The sound of the letterbox brought him back to reality. 

“Get the post, Dudley,” Uncle Vernon said through a mouthful of toast. 

“Make  Henrietta  get it!” 

“Get the post,  Henrietta .” 

Harry got to his feet, dodging Dudley’s stick as he clambered out into the hallway. 

Three things lay waiting on the doormat: a postcard from Uncle Vernon’s sister, Marge, who was holidaying on the Isle of Wight, a brown envelope that looked like a bill and--

Harry stopped dead in his tracks, a cold prickle running down his neck. 

It was a letter for him, that was a miracle on its own, but what really shocked Harry, what made his hand tremble with excitement, was the name printed on the envelope in neat, emerald writing. 

_ Mr H. Potter _

_ The Cupboard Under the Stairs _

_ 4 Privet Drive _

_ Little Whinging  _

_ Surrey.  _

_ Mr _ H. Potter. 

Maybe it was a mistake? Maybe it was a misprint? Maybe there was another H. Potter living just down the road? Potter wasn’t that uncommon of a name, was it? 

But that wouldn’t explain how they knew he slept in the cupboard. He hadn’t told anyone about that, not even Mrs Figg. 

Harry ran his fingers gently along the curves of the lettering. The paper was rough and yellow and nothing like the paper usually used for bills and the like. There was no stamp either, so whoever had sent it must have delivered it themselves. He turned the envelope over in his hands and saw a purple wax seal bearing a coat of arms: a lion, an eagle, a badger and a snake, all surrounding the letter ‘H’. 

“Hurry up, girl!” Uncle Vernon’s voice boomed from the kitchen. “What are you doing? Checking for letter-bombs?!” he laughed at his own joke. 

Harry hurried back to the kitchen unable to take his eyes off the letter. He handed Uncle Vernon the postcard and bill, sat down, and started to slowly ease off the wax seal. 

Uncle Vernon took no such care with his own post. He ripped open the bill and immediately snorted in disgust. He flipped over the postcard. “Oh, Marge’s ill,” he called to Petunia as he read. “Ate a funny Whelk--” 

Harry had just started unferling his own letter--which was written on the same kind of paper as the envelope--when Uncle Vernon ripped it out of his hand. “That’s mine!” he snapped, trying to snatch the letter back.

Uncle Vernon sneered. “Who’d be writing to you?” He shook open the letter and peered at it. In a split second,his ruddy red face drained itself of all colour. 

“Petunia!” he stammered. 

Dudley tried to grab it from him, but Vernon held the letter out of his reach. 

With a curious frown, Petunia took the letter from him and read the first line. Her face went through a similar transformation, turning the colour of day-old porridge. For a moment, Harry thought she might faint. “Vernon,” her voice was a hoarse whisper. “Vernon, oh my  _ goodness _ .” 

The two of them stared down at the letter, seemingly no longer aware that Harry and Dudley were still in the room. Needless to say, Dudley didn’t like being ignored. 

“I want to read the letter!” he cried, whacking his father on the head with his stick. 

“ _ I  _ want to read it!” Harry muttered under his breath. “I need to read it It’s my letter.” He clutched the wax seal so tightly that it started to turn soft against his palm. 

Vernon stuffed the letter back into the envelope. “Get out,” he croaked. “Both of you, out, now.” 

Neither of them moved. 

Harry swallowed hard. “I want my letter,” he said. “It’s mine.” 

“Get out!” 

Harry exploded. “I WANT MY LETTER!” It was his. It was all he had. The only thing that mattered. 

Vernon’s lips pulled back into a hard sneer. “OUT!” he dropped the letter on the table and grabbed both boys by the scruff of their collars, hauling them out into the hallway and slamming the door. 

Harry instantly knelt down to try and listen through the keyhole. 

“Out of the way, Potter!” Dudley hissed. He grabbed the back of Harry’s head and pushed him down onto the floor. Harry knew he couldn’t fight Dudley, and instead decided to just listen to the conversation through the crack under the door. 

“Vernon,” Aunt Petunia said in a hushed tone. “How could they know where she sleeps?” She drew in a sharp gasp. “You don’t think they’re watching the house, do you?” 

Harry could see Uncle Vernon’s heavy footsteps clomp back and forth maniacally. “Watching...spying...following us, maybe?” 

“Should we write them back? Tell them we don’t want--”

“No!” Vernon snapped. “No, we’ll ignore it. If they don’t get an answer ...they'll leave her...yes, we won’t do anything.” 

“But, Vernon--” 

“I’m not having one in the house! We agreed when we took her in that we’d stamp it out!” 

\---

That evening when Uncle Vernon returned from work, he did something he’d never done before: he visted Harry in his cupboard. 

Harry sat on his bed with his knees pulled close to his chest. “Do you have my letter?” he asked. “Who was it from?” 

Vernon squeezed his way into the tiny room. “No one, it was a mistake. I burned it.”

Harry felt his stomach drop. “But--”

“Quiet!” Vernon roared, his voice so loud that it shook a handful of spiders from the rafters. He took a couple deep breaths before forcing a painful smile into his lips. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, running a finger across Harry’s chest of drawers, drawing a line in the dust settled there, “about this cupboard. You’re getting too big for it, don’t you think?” he didn’t give Harry time to answer. “We’re going to move you into Dudley’s second bedroom.” 

Harry blinked dumbly. “What?” 

“Don’t ask questions!” snapped Vernon, dropping his smile. “Take your things upstairs, now! Before I change my mind.” 

Number Four Privet Drive had a total of four bedrooms: one for Harry’s aunt and uncle, one for guests (which usually meant Vernon’s sister Marge and at least three of her dogs), one for Dudley to sleep in and one for Dudley to store all the toys that wouldn’t fit in his first bedroom. 

It only took one trip for Harry to cart everything he owned upstairs, though he didn’t bother packing any of it away just yet. Rather, he flopped down onto his new bed and took in his surroundings. Nearly everything in the room, from the television Dudley had smashed when his favourite show was cancelled to the battered up bird cage that had once held Dudley's ill-fated pet parrot, was broken. The only semi-functional items Harry could see was the small shelf of books Dudley had been gifted over the years. 

Harry got to his feet and ran his fingers along the dusty spines of each book one by one. 

Downstairs, he could hear Dudley's booming wail to his mother. “She can’t stay up there! I need that room! G-Get her out!” 

Harry selected a book from the shelf and started reading, hoping it would be enough to block out his cousin’s crocodile tears. 

Yesterday he would have given anything to have a proper bedroom to himself, but now all he wanted was his letter. 

\---

Breakfast the next morning was blissfully quiet. Dudley was practically in a state of shock. He’d cried and screamed and kicked and wailed he’d even whacked Uncle Vernon over his head with his Smelting stick. But it wasn’t enough to get his room back. 

Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia kept exchanging looks. Their expressions turned darker and darker with each passing moment as they waited for the familiar sound of the post hitting the welcome mat. 

When the post finally did arrive, Uncle Vernon sent Dudley to collect it. They listened with baited breath as Dudley stomped down the hall, smacking his Smelting stick against the wall. 

And then:

“There’s another one! Mr H. Potter, The Smallest Bedroom, Four Privet--” 

With a cry, Harry jumped to his feet and bolted out into the hall. Uncle Vernon was right behind him, barreling over Harry and seizing the letter from Dudley’s hand. As he straightened up, Harry leapt up and grabbed Uncle Vernon around the neck from behind. 

Harry put up as much of a fight as he could, but with both Vernon and Dudley against him he didn’t stand much of a chance. The fight ended with him trapped under Dudley as Vernon stood triumphantly with Harry’s letter grasped between his fingers. 

“Go to your cupboard--” Uncle Vernon cut himself off with a wheeze. “You bedroom, go to your room.” He shooed his hand at Dudley. “You go to...just go.” 

Up in his bedroom, Harry paced back and forth. Not only did this person know he was a boy, but they also knew he’d moved out of his cupboard and that he’d not received the first letter. Surely that meant they’d send another one, right? 

Harry stopped in his tracks, his mouth pulled into a determined line. Next time, he decided, he wouldn’t fail. He was getting his letter. 

\---

Dudley’s old popeye alarm clock rang at exactly six o’clock the next morning. Harry turned it off sharpish and pulled on his jacket, being careful not make a sound. He couldn’t afford to wake the Dursleys. He couldn’t afford for things to go wrong. 

He snuck downstairs, without turning on any lights. He was going to wait on the corner of privet drive for the postman and get his letter delivered in person. His blood raged in his ears as he stepped closer and closer to the front door--

“ARRRGH!”

Harry yelped and jumped back. He’d stepped on something big and squishy and... _ alive?! _

Lights flickered to life and he realised with stomach-sinking dread that the thing he’d stepped on had been Uncle Vernon’s face. 

Uncle Vernon was curled up in front of the door in a sleeping bag, clearly watching for Harry. He ended up screaming at Harry for almost twenty minutes until he puffed himself out and ordered Harry to make him a cup of tea. 

When Harry returned to the hallway with a steaming mug of tea in hand, he found that the mail had arrived. In Uncle Vernon’s lap sat three pristine envelopes signed with emerald ink. 

Before Harry could open his mouth Uncle Vernon had ripped each of the letters to tiny shreds. 

Harry spent the rest of the day listening with angry tears in his eye as his uncle nailed the mail slot closed. 

“I’m not sure that’ll work, Vernon,” Petunia told her husband. 

“These people’s minds work in strange ways,” Vernon said, his mouth full of nails. “They’re not like me or you.” 

On Friday, a total of twelve letters were delivered to number four privet drive, shoved between the cracks in doors, crammed through the tiny bathroom window, even tossed down the chimney. 

Uncle Vernon burned each and every one. Once he was sure nothing but ash remained, he gathered his hammer and nails and boarded up the cracks around both the front and back door, humming ‘through the tulips’ as he worked. 

On saturday, twenty-four letters snuck their way into the house, rolled up inside two dozen eggs that their very confused milkman had handed Aunt Petunia through the living room window. While Uncle Vernon made a very loud phone call, Aunt Petunia forced Harry to blend them in the food processor. 

On Sunday, Uncle Vernon plonked himself down at the kitchen table looking pale, tired, and very happy. 

“No post on sundays,” he reminded them with childlike glee as he spread marmalade onto his toast. “No post, no letters, no--”

A deep rumble shook the house as a letter spat out the kitchen chimney. The letter stuck the back of uncle Vernon’s neck before fluttering to the ground. Next moment, thirty or forty letters came whizzing out the chimney like bullets. As the Dursleys ducked under the table, Harry jumped on top of it, his hands outstretched. 

Uncle Vernon caught him around his waist and threw him out into the hall. As Dudley and Petunia ran out, Uncle Vernon slammed the door shut. The three of them stood there, breathing deeply and listening to the pitter-patter of letters streaming into the room. 

“That does it!” Uncle Vernon said once the letters had settled. He paced back and forth, yanking at what little hair still remained on his head. “Go pack! I want you all back down here in five minutes. Just clothes, no arguments, do you understand?!”

He looked so dangerous with his eyes wide as dinner plates and a paper cut on his cheek that no one argued. Ten minutes later they were speeding towards the highway. 

Dudley sat in the backseat beside Harry, snivelling. Uncle Vernon had hit him round the head for holding them up when he tried to cram his VCR into his sports bag. 

They drove and drove and drove, but no one, not even Aunt Petunia, dared to ask Uncle Vernon where they were going. Harry wasn’t even convinced that he knew where he was taking them as he swerved from lane to lane. 

“Shake ‘em off,” Vernon muttered under his breath. “Shake ‘em off.” 

They didn’t stop to eat or drink all day, and by sunset Dudley’s snivelling had become a full blown tantrum. He was hungry and he’d missed his television program and it wasn’t fair that he couldn’t play on his computer. 

Eventually, it became too much for even Uncle Vernon to handle and he came to a stop outside of a shoddy hotel on the outskirts of some city Harry didn’t recognise. 

The drive had taken a lot out of the Dursleys, so much so that Dudley didn’t even have the energy to argue when Uncle Vernon announced that he and Harry would have to share a room. Harry was tired too--he felt as though his entire body had been kneaded like dough-- but he didn’t sleep. Instead he sat on the window sill and watched the lights of the city. 

He wondered if the neighbours had noticed their hasty escape. He wondered if Mrs Figg was worrying about him. He wondered what on earth had driven his Uncle to drop everything and run. 

Harry closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool surface of the window. The passing headlights made odd shapes against his eyelids. Harry watched them and wondered…

***

“‘Scuse me.” Harry didn’t bother to look up when the manager approached the Dursley’s table at breakfast. “Is one of you…” the manager paused. “Mr H. Potter?” 

Harry’s heart sored and it took all of his willpower not to jump from his seat. The manager was holding an envelope, an envelope with an all-too-familiar handwriting printed across it in emerald ink. 

Mr. H. Potter

Room 17

Railview Hotel

Cokeworth

Uncle Vernon snatched the letter from her before Harry had the chance. “I’ll take that,” he said, dunking the letter into his mug of coffee and holding it under until it turned to pulp.

“Daddy’s gone mad, hasn’t he?” Dudley asked his Aunt hours later. Vernon had parked at the coast and locked them inside the car before disappearing. That was almost half an hour ago. 

“It’s monday,” Dudley said suddenly. “The Great Humberto’s on tonight. I want to stay somewhere with a television.” 

_ Monday. _ Harry sank in his seat.  _ Monday.  _ That meant that tomorrow was the thirty-first of july, Harry’s birthday--his eleventh birthday. He’d never been all that fussed about birthdays if he was honest. All it meant was a ‘new’ dress, nothing more. 

It was another ten minutes before Uncle Vernon appeared again, a smile stretched across his lips. He carried a long, thin package which he kept at an arm’s length. “I found the perfect place,” he announced. “Come on, everyone out--and hurry up. There’s supposed to be a storm tonight.” 

It was bitterly cold outside of the car, but Vernon didn’t seem phased in the slightest. He led them down the coast to a dock where a toothless man stood by a rickety row boat. 

The man waved as he saw them approach and Vernon smiled back. “He’s offered to lend us his boat,” he explained, pointing to a large rock jutting out of the churning, grey waves.

If Harry squinted, he could just make out what was quite possibly the most miserable little shack in the world perched on the top of the rock. It definitely didn’t look like the kind of place to have a television. 

The boat ride to the shack seemed to go on for hours. By the time they arrived, Petunia, Dudley and Harry were drenched, freezing, and completely and utterly exhausted. 

Vernon, however, couldn’t have been happier. He wandered around the shack’s two rooms, breathing in the stench of seaweed and rotten fish as though it was as sweet as daisies. He’d brought food, but not much: just a bag of chips and four overly ripe bananas. He tried to light a fire in the shack’s damp fireplace, but the chip packet shriveled up rather than burning. “Could use a few of those letters,” he said with a grin, his eyes locked with Harry. “Isn’t that right, Henrietta?” 

Harry wanted to push him into the sea. He wanted to scream and shout. He wanted to pull a full-on, Dudley-level tantrum. 

He wanted to, but he couldn’t find the energy. There was no way for the letters to reach him, not here. 

Uncle Vernon had won. 

As night fell, the promised storm enveloped the rock, sending sheets of rain and salt water rickashaying against the tin walls. One by one the Dursleys picked the most comfortable bit of floor they could and curled up to sleep under ratty blankets Petunia had found tucked away in the corner of one of the rooms.

Eventually, Harry was the only one awake. He lay on the hard floor, shivering and turning over again and again.

The only light in the entire shack came from Dudley’s glow-in-the-dark watch, which ticked down the minutes until Harry’s birthday. 

Harry gave up on sleep. He rolled onto his stomach and drew a cake in the dust with his finger. 

Five minutes to go. Something outside creaked and Harry wondered if the roof was about to cave in.

Four. Something outside crunched against the rock. Had the storm washed something up?

Three. The walls groaned as the wind pressed against them. 

Two. A fork of lightning cut across the dark sky.

One. Harry closed his eyes and counted under his breath. Thirty seconds to go. Twenty. Ten. Nine--

BOOM. 

The whole shack shuddered as someone-- _ something _ knocked on the door.

Harry’s blood ran cold. He and the Dursleys weren’t alone. 


End file.
